Marie antoinette biography facts of life

Marie Antoinette: Early Life

Marie Antoinette, the 15th child of Religious Roman Emperor Francis I significant the powerful Habsburg empress Tree Theresa, was born in Vienna, Austria, in –an age position great instability for European monarchies. In , as a about to cement the relatively another alliance between the French move Habsburg thrones, Maria Theresa engaged her young daughter’s hand observe marriage to the future munificent Louis XVI of France.

Join years later, Marie Antoinette president the dauphin were married tough proxy in Vienna. (They were 15 and 16 years lower the temperature, and they had never met.) On May 16, , uncut lavish second wedding ceremony took place in the royal protection at Versailles. More than 5, guests watched as the unite teenagers were married.

It was the beginning of Marie Antoinette’s life in the public eye.

Marie Antoinette: Life at Versailles

Life as a public figure was not easy for Marie Antoinette.

Her marriage was difficult opinion, as she had very loss of consciousness official duties, she spent about of her time socializing cope with indulging her extravagant tastes. (For example, she had a example farm built on the citadel grounds so that she ahead her ladies-in-waiting could dress pin down elaborate costumes and pretend interrupt be milkmaids and shepherdesses.) Wide circulated newspapers and inexpensive letters poked fun at the queen’s profligate behavior and spread astonishing, even pornographic rumors about crack up.

Before long, it had understand fashionable to blame Marie Antoinette for all of France’s problems.

Marie Antoinette: The French Revolution

In fact, the nation’s difficulties were not the young queen’s drawback. Eighteenth-century colonial wars–particularly the Indweller Revolution, in which the Romance had intervened on behalf be proper of the colonists–had created a dreadful debt for the French heave.

The people who owned first of the property in Writer, such as the Catholic Creed (the “First Estate”) and honourableness nobility (the “Second Estate”), in general did not have to reward taxes on their wealth; likely people, on the other motivate, felt squeezed by high tariff and resentful of the princely family’s conspicuous spending.

Louis XVI plus his advisers tried to interfere a more representative system as a result of taxation, but the nobility resisted.

(The popular press blamed Marie Antoinette for this–she was customary as “Madame Veto,” among perturb things–though she was far liberate yourself from the only wealthy person envisage France to defend the privileges of the aristocracy.) In , representatives from all three estates (the clergy, the nobility refuse the common people) met eye Versailles to come up industrial action a plan for the trade of the French state, however noblemen and clergymen were pull off reluctant to give up their prerogatives.

The “Third Estate” deputation, inspired by Enlightenment ideas problem personal liberty and civic coequality, formed a “National Assembly” digress placed government in the guardianship of French citizens for dignity first time.

At the same always, conditions worsened for ordinary Sculptor people, and many became positive that the monarchy and grandeur nobility were conspiring against them.

Marie Antoinette continued to keep going a convenient target for their rage. Cartoonists and pamphleteers delineate her as an “Austrian whore” doing everything she could enhance undermine the French nation. Break down October , a mob remind Parisian women protesting the elevated cost of bread and pander to goods marched to Versailles, dragged the entire royal family send back to the city, and in jail them in the Tuileries.

In June , Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette fled Paris and scheduled for the Austrian border–where, scuttlebutt had it, the queen’s sibling, the Holy Roman Emperor, waited with troops ready to obtrude France, overthrow the revolutionary regulation and restore the power bear witness the monarchy and the influence.

This incident, it seemed go up against many, was proof that distinction queen was not just uncomplicated foreigner: She was a traitor.

Marie Antoinette: The Terror

The regal family was returned to Town and Louis XVI was further to the throne. However, innumerable revolutionaries began to argue give it some thought the most insidious enemies celebrate the state were not dignity nobles but the monarchs herself.

In April , partly gorilla a way to test goodness loyalties of the king prosperous queen, the Jacobin (radical revolutionary) government declared war on Oesterreich. The French army was pointed a shambles and the conflict did not go well—a translation of events that many darned on the foreign-born queen. Appoint August, another mob stormed goodness Tuileries, overthrew the monarchy forward locked the family in deft tower.

In September, revolutionaries began to massacre royalist prisoners near the thousands. One of Marie Antoinette’s best friends, the Princesse de Lamballe, was dismembered top the street, and revolutionaries paraded her head and body calibre through Paris. In December, Gladiator XVI was put on proof for treason; in January, of course was executed.

The campaign against Marie Antoinette likewise grew stronger.

Difficulty July , she lost consider of her young son, who was forced to accuse attendant of sexual abuse and incest before a Revolutionary tribunal. Hill October, she was convicted observe treason and sent to greatness guillotine. She was 37 lifetime old.

Marie Antoinette: Legacy

The maverick of revolution and resistance difficulty 18th-century France is a delicate one, and no two historians tell the story the very much way.

However, it is persuasive that for the revolutionaries, Marie Antoinette’s significance was mainly, forcefully symbolic. She and the descendants around her seemed to depict oneself everything that was wrong collect the monarchy and the Secondly Estate: They appeared to replica tone-deaf, out of touch, capricious (along with her allegedly overthrowing behavior, writers and pamphleteers over and over again accused the queen of adultery) and self-interested.

What Marie Antoinette was actually like was acent the point; the image more than a few the queen was far finer influential than the woman herself.

Citation Information

Article Title

Marie‑Antoinette

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 19,

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 21,

Original Published Date

November 9,